That’s why I’m standing in the small baby unit at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, just getting finished but inspired by those just getting started.

And saying goodbye the best way I know how to all those editors, fellow sports writers and hardcore fans that spent so much time rolling or closing their eyes when turning to Page 2.

Oh how they hated the Grocery Store Bagger, Miss Radio Personality, and everyday life as I was living it in the present tense with so little regard for the final score.

It wasn’t sports. It didn’t generate Internet hits. And I’m not here to argue, although I’m not sure you have really experienced the thrill of sports until you have seen the Anaheim Ducks put the Stanley Cup in the bed of a kid with no hair trying to smile through their cancer treatment.

It’s something I wish the 7-Eleven Kid could have witnessed, but then here I go again, 63 years in the bank; and still eager to tell you in my own way that winning really is everything.

The baby I am looking at weighs 14 ounces. It’s what the NFL likes its footballs to weigh.

Dr. Tony Soliman is telling me the baby might be the smallest human being in Orange County right now, and the doctor is beaming. He believes the 5-day-old boy will make it because he’s off a ventilator after arriving almost four months early.

“Who knows,” Soliman says, “Maybe one day he will play for the Angels.”

I fear the baby heard him. The baby stops breathing; his heart is no longer beating. An alarm bell sounds, a light begins blinking above the baby’s door and a nurse arrives.

She moves with the purpose and poise of a professional golfer teeing off, everything she does looks so effortless. She reaches her hands through a pair of portholes on the side of the infant’s isolette to make contact with the baby.

Above the baby’s head there is a monitor that has the look of a Wall Street chart from afar. It appears the Dow took a mighty plunge a moment ago, the doctor pointing to the moment when the baby’s heart stopped and the uptick when the nurse brought him back.

I don’t care how big of a night Mike Trout might have; he won’t top the nurse’s performance.

The nurse returns to her paperwork like a hitter to the dugout as if this is just what she does every day. And she does.

How many times were the Kings faced with elimination and needing a must-win? But I don’t dare suggest a parade for the nurse because ask any editor, sports writer or hardcore fan and they would tell you, “Get serious.”

All I can do is hope there is a parade for the Angels, which will mean lots of wins and tons of money raised. The baseball season began with a group of Register readers agreeing to become CHOC Angels and donating $10 for every Angels’ win.

People really are capable of doing amazing things.

The project has already raised $43,574. The goal at CHOC.org/angels, and it’s not too late to sign up, is $100,000.

Register columnist Jeff Miller has agreed to take the lead in keeping the CHOC Angels focused, and while that means people will have to read Miller, I’m excited because he’s great at irritating editors, fellow sports writers and hardcore fans.

Now I realize this isn’t the traditional walk-off column with maybe a mention of the number of Super Bowls covered and how Ryan Leaf would have been portrayed had I left the newspaper business 30-some years ago as I nearly did to accept a job selling bathroom tile in Wisconsin.

I wonder if I would have become a Cheesehead.

But then maybe the daughter never meets the Bagger, and glory be, but then maybe I don’t get 4-year-old granddaughter twins, one of them wanting to be a doctor, mom or teacher and the other a circus clown, lunch lady or pool person.

How much fun will the next 20 years be following those lofty dreams?

Now that brings me full circle to where I am standing inside CHOC.

Before Stephanie and Spencer Wilson knew this place even existed, they had their lofty dreams as well while waiting the arrival of their twins. But the twins were in such hurry to meet mom and dad, they arrived 14 weeks early.

Shea weighed 1.14 pounds; Shawn 1.12.

“They were each no bigger than a piece of paper,” says Stephanie, Shawn unable to breathe on his own and Shea having a bleeding heart.

“The first time I saw them in their little goggles and hats, I thought they were movie props,” says Spencer. “You could see right through them.”

CHOC became home for the Wilson clan, and the two other families that had their owns concerns while living in the same hospital room. Whatever it takes, as they say, mom and dad removing their tops in the crowded conditions to administer Kangaroo Care to their babies – bare skin to bare skin maybe the best medicine.

On a couple of occasions they lost Shawn, the CHOC team bringing him back, and I guess that makes the CHOC team the best I have ever come across in my career.

“As humans all we want to do in life is live, and these people at CHOC all have the same goal: bring life to the lifeless,” says Spencer, who got the chance to play catch with Shea for the first time the other day.

“We were at an event with some of the people on the CHOC team and I just watched their faces as the boys ran wild, hugged and kissed them,” says Stephanie, while apologizing because she might tear up. “If it wasn’t for those people my boys wouldn’t be here.”

The boys turn 3 in July and are on track to completely destroy the Wilson home. Or, as Stephanie says, “We take a knee to give thanks when nap time comes.”

Life is good, all right, and it really has been.

Just so you know nothing has changed as far as I am concerned, I warned Stephanie and Spencer to keep their boys away from my twin granddaughters until they have won my approval.

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